Clean attractive manuscript copy likely made in Sicily of the first Italian printed edition of Gregory’s Moralia in Job (Rome, 1475). Sicilian manuscripts are relatively rare, and this one permits interesting observations on the procedures of copying printed books. In the seventeenth century, the manuscript was housed in the well-known library of an important French Franciscan monastery.

Provenance

2.Early seventeenth-century ex-libris (f. 1) reads: “Conventus Sanctae Mariae de Cimellis Niciae,” with the additional inscription: “S. Gregorii Decretales” followed by shelfmark [?] and correction: “[S. Gregorii] Magni Morales.” This is the Franciscan Monastery Notre-Dame de Cimiez in Nice. The monastic provenance is confirmed by a pasted bookplate on upper pastedown: “Ex biblioth[eca] FF. MM. Reform. S[anctae] Mariae Cemelii Nicaeae.” After the destruction of their convent in 1543 by the Turks, the Brothers Minor of the Observance settled around 1546 in a chapel dedicated to Notre Dame and located above Nice in Cimiez (Kerval [1901], pp. 23-26). They built an abbey which housed a very fine library still in place in 1681 (see Barety [1909], p. 18; Cottineau, II, col. 3070; Kerval [1901]; Moorman [1983], pp. 340-341).

Including the first 19 out of 35 books of Gregory’s Moralia in Job, the present manuscript was clearly copied from an incunable edition of the Moralia in Job (on the incunable editions of the Moralia in Job, see Indice generale degli incunaboli delle biblioteche d’Italia, vol. III, no. 4440-4447). The first edition was printed in Nuremburg, [Johann Sensenschmidt], 1471 (Hain, 7928; IGI, no. 4440). The first Italian edition was printed in Rome, apud Sancum Marcum, 1475 (Hain, 7929; IGI, no. 4441: a copy kept in Monreale) and then in Venice, Rinaldo da Nimega, 1480 (Hain, 7930; IGI, no. 4442: a copy in Palermo)). The present manuscript was copied from the Rome, 1475 edition, that is, from the first Italian edition, and not the other later Venice, 1480 edition, since the former includes the text later entitled Miraculum de inventione librorum…, whereas the latter does not. Also, certain textual clues reveal how the scribe copied from the Roman edition: one finds in the 1475 edition the following “ad eternal penam rapiuntur” (end of book 8); “adletha” (beginning of book 10); “expectat” (end of book 14). These characteristics have been corrected in the Venice 1480 edition into “ad eternal rapiuntur” (omitting “penam”); “athleta”; and “expectatur.”

The conversion from the hand-written book to the machine-printed one was a gradual, slow and uneven process. Many decades after the first printed books became available, scribes continued to copy manuscripts in their accustomed way in scriptoria all over Europe. The present case is a reverse example of how, instead of using manuscript books to make printed editions, incunabula were used to compose hand-written books. Although the printed press appeared relatively early in Sicily (Consuetudines urbis Panhormi [Customs for the city of Palermo], Palermo, A. Vyel, 1478 is the first Sicilian imprint, followed by other imprints in Messina; see Pastena [1995], p. 75), printing did not actually thrive before the sixteenth century. It is thus entirely plausible and understandable that, given the scarcity of printed editions in Sicily in the fifteenth-century, readers would need to have hand-written copies made of their texts.

Gregory the Great was the first monk to become pope from 590-604. He left a substantial literary heritage, but his most ambitious work and one of the most popular works of scriptural exegesis in the Middle Ages remains the Moralia in Job, commenting on the Book of Job in 35 books. The biblical Book of Job concerns the question of why the believer (and unbeliever) should suffer alike: Job is a model of piety, tested by God and deprived of all his possessions. Notwithstanding, Job maintains his faith in God, and constitutes a prefiguration of Christ’s suffering. The Moralia in Job was intensively studied as a model of interpretation and thinking, a treatise on Christian ethics.

The Moralia in Job consists not of a treatise but a commentary, verse by verse, on the biblical Book of Job. Gregory begins by giving the sensus historicus, then the sensus allegoricus and finally the sensus moralis of a given verse. He thus distinguishes three kinds of meaning which could be sought from Scripture: literal, allegorical and moral senses. Gregory seemingly perceived the last interpretation--the moral one--the most important one. Gregory believed that scripture has a deeper meaning than that associated with the literal or historical meaning. In his Moralia in Job, he examines each text to see which of the three senses (historical, allegorical and moral) can best transmit the Word of God. Gregory’s Moralia in Job is extant in numerous manuscripts, testifying to its enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.